Research 



A Year of Significant Contributions 



Continuing a tradition of excellence and influence 



Smithsonian scholars ask some intriguing questions: What 

 makes up the mysterious material being sucked into the 

 black hole at the center of our galaxy? How have African 

 American photographers shaped our understanding of a 

 people's history? Why ate Washington's celebrated cherry 

 trees blooming eatliet every year? How do we know that Leif 

 Ericson was the first European to set foot on the North 

 American continent? 



From an orbiting observatory probing the far reaches of 

 the universe, to art conservation laboratories in the Freer and 

 Sackler Galleries, to the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort 

 Pierce on Florida's Atlantic coast, exploration and discovery 

 are thriving. The Smithsonian is both a premier research 

 institution and a thriving center for learning, and the com- 

 bination is powerful. Scholars advance knowledge about 

 human beings, our universe, and our place in it, while seek- 

 ing solutions to pressing global problems. Their research 

 also shapes exhibitions and programs to provide a solid edu- 

 cational expetience for Smithsonian audiences. "We have a 

 special obligation to explain what we are doing," Secretary 

 Lawrence M. Small has observed, "to bring the public along 

 with us, to communicate the importance and the conse- 

 quences of our work." 



A pair of merging galaxies in the Constellation Corvus is 

 giving astronomers a glimpse of the young universe 15 bil- 

 lion years ago. "Galaxies were much closer together then," 

 explains Giuseppina Fabbiano of the Smithsonian Astro- 

 physical Observatory (SAO). Such collisions were more 

 common, and "they played a major role in shaping the galax- 

 ies we see around us today." 



Fabbiano and her SAO colleagues Andreas Zezas and 

 Stephen Murray have observed the two galaxies — about 60 



million light-years from Earth — using the orbiting Chandra 

 X-ray Observatory, which SAO built and operates under 

 conttact to the National Aeronautics and Space Administra- 

 tion. Launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in July 

 1999, Chandra is the most sophisticated x-tay observatory 

 ever built, with a resolving power equivalent to the ability 

 to read a stop sign from a distance of 12 miles. The images it 

 returns from high-energy regions of the universe, such as the 

 remnants of supernovas, are transforming astronomy. Scien- 

 tific support and the operations control center for this 

 mission are located at SAO in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 



"What we are witnessing with Chandta is galaxy ecology 

 in action," says Zezas. As the two galaxies in Constellation 

 Corvus collide, they produce massive bubbles of expanding 

 x-ray-emitting gas at such astonishing rates that they are 

 bumping into each other to create "superbubbles" with sur- 

 prisingly bright x-tay luminosities. Ovet tens of billions of 

 yeats, the superbubbles enrich the galaxy's supply of oxygen 

 and othet elements, supporting the cycle of star birth, death, 

 and renewal. 



Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

 (STRI) in Panama who study the behavior of tropical ani- 

 mals have discovered that parasites take advantage of their 

 hosts in unusual ways. Perhaps no story tops the one about 

 the spider and the wasp. On the night that the patasitic 

 wasp larva will kill its orb-weaving spider host, the wasp in- 

 duces the spider to weave a unique web designed to support 

 the larva's cocoon. 



William Eberhard of STRI and the University of Costa 

 Rica had been observing orb-weaving spiders for 10 years 

 when he uncovered this story, which is probably the most 

 elaborate known example of an insect parasite manipulating 

 the behaviot of its host. His report in the July 2000 issue of 

 the journal Nature was the first to describe the wasps' behav- 

 ior and explain it as a fast-acting, apparently chemical 

 phenomenon with long-term effects. 



